page_title: Kaufering concentration camp complex
section_title: Forced labor
hierarchical_section_title: Kaufering concentration camp complex / Forced labor
context_page_description: Kaufering was a system of eleven subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp located around the town of Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria, which operated between 18 June 1944 and 27 April 1945. Previously, Nazi Germany had deported all Jews from the Reich, but having exhausted other sources of labor, Jews were deported to Kaufering to create three massive underground bunkers, Weingut II, Diana II, and Walnuss II, which would not be vulnerable to the Allied bombing which had devastated German aircraft factories. The bunkers were intended for the production of Messerschmitt Me 262 aircraft, but none were produced at the camps before the United States Army captured the area.
  Kaufering was the largest of the Dachau subcamps and also the one with the worst conditions; about half of the 30,000 prisoners died from hunger, disease, executions, or during the death marches. Most of the sites were not preserved and have been repurposed for other uses.
context_section_description: Unusually, the construction of the camps, as well as providing food and medical care, was the responsibility of the Organization Todt (OT), not the SS, which sought to extract the maximum labor for the minimum expense. The prisoners deported to each camp had to construct the accommodation themselves, The resulting huts, partially buried for camouflage from aerial reconnaissance, were completely inadequate for the weather conditions. Rain and snow leaked through the earthen roofs, and vermin infested the huts. Prisoners had to sleep in straw spread on the floor. Of Dachau's subcamps, Kaufering had the worst conditions.
  Most prisoners were forced to work building railway embankments and hauling bags of cement for the bunker-building projects, codenamed Weingut II, Diana II and Walnuss II. Weingut II was 400 metres (1,300 ft) long and 28.4 metres (93 ft) high (more than five stories), with a concrete roof 3 metres (9.8 ft) thick. The roof had been planned to be 5 metres (16 ft) thick, but that was pared down due to lack of materials. The total floor area would be 95,000 square metres (1,020,000 sq ft); the Augsburg factory that it intended to replace had only 12,700 square metres (137,000 sq ft) of floor area in three dispersal locations. For protection from air raids, 40% of the bunker was underground and its roof was covered with dirt for camouflage. At least 10,000 Jewish prisoners worked on the bunker at some point.
  The bunkers were to be used for producing different components of the Messerschmitt Me 262A aircraft, the first operational jet aircraft, which the Germans hoped would turn the tide of war against the Allies. Messerschmitt AG hoped to produce 900 Me 262 aircraft and additional Me 163B rocket-powered aircraft at Kaufering, by employing 10,000 workers per shift in each bunker, 90,000 in all, of whom one-third were to be concentration camp prisoners. However, the construction of Diana II and Walnuss II was not finished due to the lack of concrete and steel. When the United States liberated the area in April 1945, the excavation of Weingut II was not complete, but already production machines had been set up.  However, not a single aircraft was produced before liberation.
  The murderous conditions meant that most prisoners were incapacitated in a short time, and OT and construction workers brutally beat victims in order to extract labor. Most prisoners were forced to work building railway embankments and hauling bags of cement for the bunker-building projects. OT workers complained that, due to severe vermin infestation, prisoners spent time attempting to rid themselves of fleas when they were supposed to be working. In December 1944, an OT staff member observed that of 17,600 prisoners, only 8,319 were capable of work, including those only capable of light work. Because the companies that hired the workers complained that they had to pay for the labor of prisoners unable to work, transports totaling 1,322 or 1,451 people were dispatched to Auschwitz in September and October 1944, where the victims were gassed.
caption: The purpose of the camp was to produce Messerschmitt Me 262A aircraft.
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